English and Spanish colonization efforts in southeastern…
January 1702 CE
English and Spanish colonization efforts in southeastern North America had begun coming into conflict as early as the middle of the seventeenth century.
The English founding of the Province of Carolina in 1663 and Charles Town (present-day Charleston, South Carolina) in 1670 had significantly raised tensions with the Spanish who had long been established in Florida.
Traders and slavers from the new province have penetrated into Spanish Florida, leading to raiding and reprisal expeditions on both sides.
Carolina's governor, Joseph Blake, had in 1700 threatened the Spanish that English claims to Pensacola, established by the Spanish in 1698, would be enforced.
Carolina traders such as Anthony Dodsworth and Thomas Nairne have established alliances with Creeks in the upper watersheds of rivers draining into the Gulf of Mexico, who they supply with arms and from whom they purchase slaves and animal pelts.
The Spanish population of Florida at this time is fairly small.
Since its founding in the sixteenth century, the Spanish have set up a network of missions whose primary purpose is to pacify the local native population and convert them to Roman Catholicism.
In the Apalachee region (roughly present-day western Florida and southwestern Georgia), there were fourteen mission communities with a total population in 1680 of about eight thousand.
Many, but not all, of these communities are populated by the Apalachee; others are from different tribes that have migrated southward to the area.
The Spanish have a policy of not arming these natives with muskets, and the Apalachee missions have suffered from English and Creek raids in 1701.
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, the French founder of Mobile in January 1702, warns the Spanish commander at Pensacola that he should properly arm the Apalachees and engage in a vigorous defense against English incursions into Spanish territory.
D'Iberville even offers equipment and supplies for the purpose.
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